Unless you are planning on going to some sort of summer school, you are probably thinking about a few weeks of blissfully doing nothing. Watching rubbish TV, hanging out with friends, and maybe heading off on holiday are all part of the summer holiday experience, but this doesn’t mean you should drop your studies altogether. If you are planning on going back to study after the summer (whether A levels, university, or college) then you might want to consider checking out these five tips to keep your academic self on track over the summer months.
Whether you are going into the second year of a course or starting something new, now is the time to find out what you will be studying next year. Speak with your tutors if you can to find out what you can be working on over the summer, or check with the syllabus for your upcoming course. It is worth checking now, before teachers and others start thinking about their summer holidays too!
If you are heading off to the beach, why not take a textbook with you? Check reading lists if you can, and buy a textbook or two ready for next year. That said, some textbooks can be expensive, so don’t forget to check in with your local or college library or look for second-hand copies being sold by former students. Even if you aren’t sure exactly what textbooks you might need you can still do some reading around the subject you are studying. Getting ahead is good, but just keeping your mind ticking over will help too.
You might have some notes that you can look over and revise too. Looking over your notes will allow you to keep refreshed on your studies over the summer weeks – you might even want to take some time to tidy them up, ditching unwanted pages and maybe rewriting some of your more hurried notes so that they will make sense later.
You could also look over some of your past papers to see what you got wrong. Whether it is a big or a small thing, if you can make good on your mistakes you will be stronger next year. By working out where you went wrong you can avoid making the same mistakes next year – plus you can also check for any gaps in your knowledge. There is no shame in getting things wrong – the problem is when you fail to do anything about it!
Aside from reading texts you might want to look for other ways of keeping your learning going over the summer. Perhaps there is an exhibition, talk, or a museum you could visit to help bring the study to life? Another idea is to take up a hobby that will boost your CV. Alternatively, you might want to keep an eye on the TV and watch a few programmes related to your studies. There are plenty of shows on TV that deal with things like science, geography, arts, history, and literature – use them to your advantage to keep you learning over the summer months. You might even want to go the extra mile and improve your memory as well!
